


Line of the Lucii

by Mun Kiri (NekoAisu)



Series: Asks [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Heavy Angst, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 13:53:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15820200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoAisu/pseuds/Mun%20Kiri
Summary: For the ask:This is sad but au where Niflheim isn't a threat and when Regis passes away from the crystal, Clarus can't even look at Noctis anymore because of how similar he looks to Regis when he was younger (I'm sorry omg)





	Line of the Lucii

**Author's Note:**

> This is sad ya'll

Even knowing that he was powerless to stop it, Clarus can’t stop blaming himself for his King’s death. 

Regis hadn’t been killed by an aggressor, not by the negligence of his Shield, or anything tangible. He’d been killed by his own country, by the weight of the Lucii as they steal his life with their legacy. 

It was an honorable death, Clarus knows. He’s done his duty. He served the Crown as protector of King and Country, but he still aches for the loss of his friend and found family. 

Then, there’s Noctis. 

When he was younger, the prince was nearly a perfect copy of Queen Aulea, may she rest in peace, but the moment he’d hit puberty, he’d begun to look more and more like Regis. He began to look like a king. 

It was the sharpening of his jawline, how his eyes were tired and kind in equal measure, already shuttered back behind a facade even though he’s barely twenty five by the time he is crowned King. Noctis is a good king, Clarus admits, and it is because of that confidence that he worries. 

Regis was a good king. All of Lucis, and even parts of allied Eos, mourned him. Clarus can’t forget how he’d been pushing himself too hard, ignoring every sign that he needed to rest in favor of just working harder for his people (even though it was a willful sort of ignorance, that which comes with the knowledge that he would run out of time, regardless). 

Noctis’s coronation sets all of Lucis at ease, seeing Regis in their next King. It makes Clarus fight to keep from turning away and breaking protocol because Noctis is already filling his father’s shoes. He’s a righteous king, but he’s also a selfless king, and Clarus knows the tells of the Lucii’s drain. 

Part of him knows, deep down in a place he never seeks out, that he’ll probably live to see Noctis fall, as well. It’s a truth he’d rather not ever see come to pass.

Three years later has Noctis smiling in the same way Regis had a tendency to do, but a little more lopsided. His eyes are already darker, lined with a permanent fatigue no person his age should ever have to bear. 

Five and he’s able to fit Regis’s old clothes. Clarus finds him crying over his mother’s circlet the same way he’d found Regis mourning Mors. He pretended to have never seen it and left, blinking visions of his king from the hallways, the court chambers, his own bedroom. 

He stops looking at Noctis. He can’t bear another tragedy, even as he can feel it creeping up on them all. 

**Author's Note:**

> Yell at/with me on:  
> Tumblr: Kiriami-sama  
> Twitter: FlamingAceKiri


End file.
